The Fight For Survival:African-American gang members and their families in a segregated society

We can no longer trivialize, or ignore, the impact of structural impediments, racial discrimination, and racial segregation in our analysis of African-American youth gangs in America's inner cities. These issues set a stage where 79 African-American youngsters view their gang affiliation as a means for survival. The present study, conducted over a four-year period, explores structural and racial barriers that many African-Americans, parents and children, encounter regularly. The participants, gang members and their parents, reveal their frustrations about the lack of opportunities for many inner city African-Americans, their experiences as targets of racial discrimination and segregation, and their confinement to deteriorating, poverty-stricken neighborhoods in Detroit.